Page 79 of Riding the Line
Finally, I press call.
Wyatt answers almost instantly. ‘Dude, where the hell are you? Have you heard from Cherry? We’ve been trying to get a hold of both of you.’ The faint panic already lacing his words forces me to blow out another deep breath. When I don’t respond immediately, his voice hardens.‘Duke?’
‘I’m at the hospital,’ I explain.
‘What – are you okay? Is Cherry okay?’
Keep breathing, Duke. You can handle this.
‘We’re fine. But we got in an accident. On my bike.’ Each word comes out laboured, the hand not holding my phone scrunched into a tight fist.
‘Rory, grab my keys!’ Wyatt suddenly shouts, the scuff of footsteps across the wooden floor already audible as he hurries around the house.
‘What’s happened?’ Rory’s voice rings out distantly on the end of the line.
‘We need to go,’ Wyatt insists.
‘Neither of us are seriously hurt,’ I try to reassure him, knowing that despite her seizures, as far as the paramedics were aware, Cherry’s injuries weren’t serious. ‘But Cherry … she – she had a fit after the crash and—’
‘Why the hell was she on your bike, Duke?’ There’s a gravelly edge to his voice now, like subdued thunder, the same kind I listened to only a couple of days ago with Cherry in my arms. ‘Duke?’
‘She’d been wanting to learn to ride for a while—’
‘Why does that matter to you?’ Exasperation makes his voice rougher.
‘Hey,’ it’s Rory’s voice again in the background, ‘let me drive.’
The jingle of keys sounds before a front door thuds. Pounding rain fills the phoneline, rushing sounds and heavy footfalls, until Rory and Wyatt must reach the safety of their truck. The distant rumble of an engine cuts in.
‘Jesus, Duke.’ Wyatt breathes out on a sharp, shaky exhale. ‘You know I wouldn’t want Cherry putting herself in danger like that.’
‘I know, I’m sorry. I thought the roads would be fine. We were coming over together, to talk to you—’
‘Talk to me about what?’ Wyatt asks.
My throat is too tight, too blocked up to push the words out.
He presses again, ‘Aboutwhat, Duke?’
‘About … us.’
Wyatt’s only response is to whisper back, repeating the wordus,as if it’s a foreign word he’s trying to decipher,when in truth it’s a reality he never expected. Perhaps even never wanted.
I push on, ‘Look, I can explain better when you get here, just – they won’t let me see her unless there’s family and—’
‘You’re supposed to be my best friend,’ is all he says, his voice stripped bare of all the previous anger, leaving it hoarse and drowning with disappointment. ‘What have you done?’
Then the phone line goes dead and my heart drops.
All those years worrying about Wyatt finding out I liked Cherry crumble away as if they were nothing. Insignificant in the present moment while his little sister lies unconscious in a hospital bed because of me. Especially when he storms into the hospital, taking one look at me, my bloodied clothes, and walks straight to the desk without a word. Rory mouths to me,I’m sorry, as the nurse directs Wyatt to Cherry’s room, but she doesn’t get a chance to say more as her hand is interlinked with Wyatt’s and he whisks her off, leaving me alone in the waiting room with nothing but my world shattering around me.
37
Cherry
It sounds like someone’s poured thousands of pebbles over the roof. Their tumbling is thunderous, rattling down the walls around me. Each second of clattering causes the dull ache behind my brow to intensify, the throbbing falling in sync with the rhythmic beeping. I want to open my eyes, but even forcing my chest to lift with each breath seems too large a feat. My limbs are lifeless, my bones as heavy as stone.
Maybe I should just go back to sleep.
